Bomb survivor 'will never forget'

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

	ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Spc. Audra Hauer of Ellensburg reflects as she describes her experience in Iraq at a restaurant near Fort Lewis. She is recovering from a fractured back and shrapnel wounds received when a mine exploded under her truck.
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Sometimes at the end of the day, Spc. Audra Hauer closes the door to her room in the Fort Lewis barracks. She slaps in a CD and works on her hip hop, just like back in high school, when dance and theater filled her life and she dreamed of college or one day venturing to Hollywood.

Instead, Hauer left Ellensburg for Iraq. At 19, she became an Army National Guard trucker ferrying supplies through Baghdad.

On June 12, her tour of duty came to an end: Her truck struck a mine.

The explosion shot 2- and 3-inch hunks of shrapnel into her buttocks and showered her arms and legs with metal slivers. The force slammed her against the cab roof, fracturing her back.

	Sgt. Jeff Elliott helped free Hauer after the explosion, unaware that he, too, was wounded.

"My heart just about jumped out of my chest," said Sgt. Jeffrey Elliott, of Moses Lake, who was behind the wheel that day. "I thought she was dead."

Today, Hauer is very much alive, recovering with Elliott at Fort Lewis. They were among the first flush of Northwest soldiers injured in the first year of war in Iraq. A total of 2,842 soldiers have been wounded in action since the war began. Some 430 others have suffered so-called nonhostile injuries.

Hauer and Elliott were assigned to a holding unit largely composed of soldiers deemed too ill or injured for deployment. The soldiers often dwell in a kind of emotional limbo, their hearts split between their buddies still in Iraq and their families back home. Meanwhile, their time is filled with the monotony and routines of base life as they wait for damaged bodies or minds to heal.

At Fort Lewis, trash pickup and graveyard shifts answering phones are common duty for the wounded and sick. Hauer, however, is grateful for these days. She feels like she got a second chance at life.

"Going to Baghdad. Seeing the things I saw. I will never forget," Hauer says. "Everyone needs to have a story. And I have a story now. That means a lot to me."

Enlisted after 9-11

Audra Hauer went to war with her high-school sweetheart and fiancé, Rick Fyhrie, whom she met while acting in a school play.

Their senior year began with the Sept. 11 attacks, and in a surge of patriotism and with a yen for adventure, they enlisted in the Washington Army National Guard. They joined the Ephrata-based 1161st Transportation Company, and after graduating, they got their basic training in Missouri.

By late May, the unit was camped outside Baghdad at an abandoned farm. As the temperatures spiked at times above 130 degrees, they hauled palletized loads of supplies to U.S. camps.

Hauer relished life as she learned to navigate the freeways and crowded downtown streets of Baghdad. Friendly and confident, she was a popular figure in a unit that included other young soldiers.

Hauer's driving partner was Elliott, who at 35 had left behind his wife and five children and job as a security officer at McNary Dam in Eastern Washington.

At first, theirs was an uneasy relationship. Elliott thought Hauer lacked experience driving the 25-ton trucks, and he thought he had to be tough on her if she was going to improve. Hauer found Elliott overbearing at times.

The two, however, could not escape each other. Day after day, they shared the driving, and their relationship mellowed into a scrappy, wise-cracking friendship. She would constantly sing a medley of pop songs she wrote herself. She eventually cajoled him into singing serenades, including a raggedy rendition of the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin."

June 12, despite the oppressive heat, Hauer put on her Kevlar helmet and flak jacket as they cruised along a highway near Baghdad. They were following close behind a Humvee, which suddenly swerved to straddle a suspicious black plastic bag. Elliott had no time to react.

"The whole cab went dark," he recalls. "The next thing you know, there was a glow behind Audra."

A time for prayer

Elliott was the first to regain consciousness. Wracked with guilt over his failure to avoid the mine, he called Hauer's name.

Nothing.

	PROVIDED BY JEFF ELLIOTT A photo shows damage to the truck in which Hauer and Elliott were traveling when a bomb exploded in the road. They prayed together after surviving the blast.

He got out and yanked at the passenger-side door. It was jammed. He tried again. No luck.

Frustrated, he reached into the cab and asked Hauer to take his hand. She responded, and they both prayed.

Another soldier arrived, and they pulled Hauer out and moved her to the median. Elliott told Hauer she would be all right, just like he had been trained to do.

She didn't believe him.

"She says, 'Yeah, whatever.' So then I started to get mad. I threw off my sunglasses, and I said, 'Audra, you are going to be OK,' and at this point she finally started to believe."

For Hauer, the next month was a blur of hospitals in Germany; Washington, D.C.; California; and finally a few days at Madigan at Fort Lewis.

Doctors picked out the biggest hunks of shrapnel. But smaller slivers remained in her elbow, knee and other areas of her body. Fed intravenously, her weight fell to 110 pounds from 135. She had trouble with movement on her right side, and even if she overcame the paralysis, doctors thought she would have difficulty walking. Then there was her fractured back.

Hauer says she was filled with joy over what she felt was the miracle of her survival. That joy gave her energy to heal. She made the most progress once she was allowed to convalesce in her mother's home in Port Orchard, where she arrived in a wheelchair.

Soon, she could get up to answer the phone. By September, wearing a back brace, she was walking. Still an active-duty soldier, it was time for Hauer to report for duty at Fort Lewis.

In the medical hold unit, Hauer found herself joining a more troubled group of soldiers than she had ever known. They came mostly from units based across the West.

Medical problems prevented some from being deployed overseas. Most suffered war wounds, accidental injuries or physical or mental illnesses that sent them home early. The Fort Lewis unit — known as the 2122nd — now tops 300 soldiers. The unit's size reflects the swelling ranks of the infirm, which in early March numbered 4,100 soldiers nationwide, according to the Army Medical Command.

Early on, the Army in some cases struggled to provide timely long-term care for all these soldiers.

Last October at Fort Stewart, Ga., the Army was stung by complaints from medical hold unit soldiers that they were lodged in substandard barracks with no running water and sometimes waited for months just to see a doctor. The Army worked to improve those conditions as a Senate inquiry and a U.S. General Accounting Office investigation were launched.

	ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES After a visit, Audra Hauer and Jeff Elliott share a goodbye hug. They're recovering in a Fort Lewis medical hold unit that has grown to more than 300 soldiers.

Congressional officials who looked at Fort Lewis say conditions at that medical hold unit were better than at Fort Stewart. After an initial stay in World War II-era barracks, the wounded were moved last fall into more modern quarters as departing soldiers freed up space.

The soldiers at Fort Lewis also had access to Madigan Medical Center, a major Army hospital located on the base. Though soldiers say that at least one unit — orthopedics — strains to keep up with patient loads, other units have had adequate staffing. And Hauer has been able to work closely with physical therapists and other medical personnel to aid in her recovery.

"I think the system is working as well as it can," said Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, commander of the Washington Army National Guard.

But the hold unit can be tough on a soldier's morale. "A lot of them are just tired of war and want to go home," Hauer said. "They are tired, and they hurt. And on top of that, they may be picking up garbage all day with wounded backs or limbs."

At Fort Lewis, Hauer has worked to keep up her spirits. Though still dogged by pain, hearing loss, and nerve damage in her legs, she now walks without a limp and can even run for several miles at a time.

Others in the unit have made much slower progress.

One of them is Elliott, her Baghdad rescuer.

In the moments after the explosion, he was so pumped up with adrenaline that he barely noticed his own injuries. But within a few days, he was experiencing excruciating back pain, and after a five-week attempt to mend in Iraq, he returned to the Fort Lewis hold unit.

Some eight months later, Elliot is still struggling with chronic pain from the rupture of a disc in his lower back and other damage from the blast. During a recent visit with a physical therapist, Elliott was able to pick up only 24.9 pounds, and he learned that the pain likely would be lifelong.

"I thought, jeez, what I want to at least be able do is be able to pick up my youngest daughter, and right now she weighs 27 pounds."

Elliott says he also suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome triggered by his experiences in Iraq. Sudden noises are unnerving. And base training exercises produce plenty of explosions, machine-gun fire and overhead helicopters that echo the sounds of combat.

"There are quite a few of us in the same boat, though not everyone acknowledges it," Elliott said. "I think it's a lot more detrimental if you don't seek treatment."

Both Elliott and Hauer likely will stay in the medical hold units for at least several more months. Once they return to civilian life, Hauer hopes to attend college and Elliott has thought about going back to school. They both hope the Army's final determination of their disabilities won't prevent them from staying in the Reserve — and perhaps returning one day to active duty.

At the base, Elliott and Hauer occasionally get together. Two wartime buddies blessed with a friendship that now gives both strength.

They talk about the latest news from their unit in Iraq. Earlier this month, that news was sobering: Yakima native Spc. Joe Davis arrived at Fort Lewis with serious shrapnel wounds to his legs and arms. The rest of the unit is expected to return to Washington this spring. And by summer, Hauer says, she plans to finally wed her fiancé. Elliott says he will be there and has promised her one more rendition of "Nights in White Satin."

Seattle Times photographer Ellen Banner contributed to this report. Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

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